Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I was getting ready to send a note that basically said I give up when I saw this post from Randy. Thanks Randy. Then a friend posted this TED talk and it landed in my facebook feed. It gives me hope that there are a few men out there who might get the issue. I personally would love to see the IETF consult someone like this speaker. http://www.upworthy.com/a-ted-talk-that-might-turn-every-man-who-watches-it-into-a-feminist-its-pretty-fantastic-7?g=2 I have found this whole thread discouraging and I felt the need to say something. This TED talk pretty much sums it up. Thanks! ---Cathy On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote: you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. -- bob dylan we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly non-diverse. it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly non-diverse culture. we need to do what we can to remedy this. progress not perfection is our goal. measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...). we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate what we can do to help. randy
Re: How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards? Was: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 13:15 29-04-2013, Michael StJohns wrote: Let me ask a couple of specific questions of you. I think that these are good questions. Who have you mentored in the past 5 years? Have they ended up as working group chairs, or ADs or IAB members? Do they mostly represent under-represented groups? How many of them were employed by your employer (e.g. was this a work related task?)? I don't mentor IETF participants as I consider everyone who does not have a title as a peer. None of the peers I have interacted with ended up as working group chair, Area Director or IAB member. I have not given much thought about whether most of the peers I have interacted with represent under-represented groups. My guess is that it is a significant number. During your time as an AD, how many women did you arm twist/recruit specifically (or ask nicely) to take WG positions in your area (as opposed to them coming to you or your co-AD)? I do some things on behalf of the Applications Area directorate. At the last IETF meeting I asked four women whether they would like to do some reviews. There was one positive answer. There are people of different ages. There are people who work for a range of vendors on the directorate. There are a few people who work for universities. There are people who come from different parts of the world. The list of reviewers and the work they perform is published on an IETF web site [1]. If anyone has questions about under-represented groups in relation to the directorate please post a message to this mailing list and I will reply. Regards, S. Moonesamy 1. http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/app/trac/wiki/ApplicationsAreaDirectorate
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I was counting femal ADs. I ment no female names in the AD list apears (in my understandning I mybe wrong because in my culture some families name their memebrs with names that we cannot notice gender). As I am a remote participant I am not aware and may never notice difference. But I can refer now for better than my count [1]. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg78882.html AB On 19 April 2013 at 12:22 Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambaryun at gmail.com wrote on this list: No name in the AD list appear so far, but if your the discuss-list is right then it may be good progress, hoping for more names for diversity. I count three ADs on the diversity discussion list at the moment. Why is my count different from yours? Adrian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
- Original Message - From: Margaret Wasserman m...@lilacglade.org To: t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com Cc: Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org; ietf@ietf.org Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 1:53 AM Hi Tom, On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are, e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack of ability. […] If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world - which could in extremes.. Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of these groups? Where is this coming from? You are putting up strawmen, so that you can tear them down… The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. There is no inherent reason why 40+-year-old, white, western males who work at large networking equipment vendors are inherently more capable of serving on the IESG than people from other groups within the IETF, and there would be _considerable internal benefit_ to having an IESG that was more diverse, because diverse groups make better decisions and better represent the needs of the whole organization. Therefore, if there is something about our culture, our structure, our selection process, or the way we run our meetings that is causing us to predominantly select our leadership from a restricted group, we would have _more capable_ and _better_ leadership if we could find a way to broaden that pool. _That_ is what this discussion is about. This is not an effort to meet some externally imposed notion of diversity. tp Margaret The first I saw of this idea was the post by Ray, which said The IETF is concerned about diversity. As good engineers, we would like to attempt to measure diversity while working on addressing and increasing it. To that end, we are considering adding some possibly sensitive questions to the registration process, for example, gender. For me, this came out of the blue. I have no idea why it is considered that the IETF - note, IETF not IAB or IESG or IAOC - has become concerned nor what evidence there is of concern. And note, 'for example, gender' which seems to have become the only measure under consideration; was that Ray's intent, or was he being coy and leaving out other frequent lacks of diversity which are more delicate to discuss? I immediately assumed the latter, based on no evidence at all! Given the way the discussion has gone, perhaps he meant 'only and exclusively gender but I could not possibly say that':-) As Michael StJohns has said, How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards? which I think is spot on. I do not see diversity (lack of) as being part of that until it is shown to be. I do see the IESG as key to the work of the IETF and see filling positions there as challenging, perhaps a risk to the long term existence of the IETF. The requirements - technical knowledge, experience, time to spend on IETF business, e.g. - make the candidate pool rather small and I believe that any more constraints will weaken that pool and could hazard the IETF. There are workshops for (potential?) WG Chairs; I would see merit in more such sessions on how to work effectively within the IETF, at any level, with a subtext of it is possible to do more, to 'advance', it is really not (quite) impossible. Diversity would have no place in such workshops but it could increase the candidate pool for a variety of posts. Tom Petch /tp Margaret
Re: [IETF] Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
- Original Message - From: Warren Kumari war...@kumari.net To: Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca Cc: Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu; ietf@ietf.org; stbry...@cisco.com Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 10:01 PM On Apr 29, 2013, at 4:55 PM, Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca wrote: On 2013-04-29, at 16:49, Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu wrote: Stewart == Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com writes: Stewart Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems Stewart akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something that matters for your decision criteria. http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png Wow, that *was* useful, and has helped reinforce my belief that I chose the right browser -- Think of the children, don't use IE. tp Warren The correlation that has attracted attention near me is the marked drop in crime rates compared with a reduction in the use of leaded petrol; here, you can make a comparison with countries that have or have not reduced the use of leaded petrol at different times, and the correlation stands up, so perhaps Microsoft is not implicated in this one. Tom Petch Couldn't resist: http://xkcd.com/552/ W Joe -- There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and straong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum! or Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch! -- Terry Pratchett
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I think the statistics are very interesting and we should continue developing them, but we should also not be driven by them. I'll repeat again what I've said before: I can see increasing both participation diversity and leadership diversity being useful for the IETF. We are limited by various constraints, type of people who are in our field, where the industry is located in the world, funding resources, expertise gained by various participants, etc. But within those constraints, I'd see plenty of benefits to increasing diversity along many axes. (Or indeed even relaxing some of the constraints, such lowering participation costs by remote participation, or lowering leadership costs by requiring less than 100% time commitments.) Jari
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. -- bob dylan we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly non-diverse. it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly non-diverse culture. we need to do what we can to remedy this. progress not perfection is our goal. measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...). we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate what we can do to help. randy
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote: you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. -- bob dylan we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly non-diverse. it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly non-diverse culture. we need to do what we can to remedy this. progress not perfection is our goal. measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...). we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate what we can do to help. randy Nicely said Randy. --dmm
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 30, 2013, at 4:53 PM 4/30/13, David Meyer d...@1-4-5.net wrote: On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Randy Bush ra...@psg.com wrote: you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. -- bob dylan we do not need measurements to know the ietf is embarrassingly non-diverse. it is derived from and embedded in an embarrassingly non-diverse culture. we need to do what we can to remedy this. progress not perfection is our goal. measurement may be useful to see if we are having effect and/or what things have effect (meeting locales, size of cookies, ...). we should be asking the minorities and those struggling to particiate what we can do to help. randy Nicely said Randy. --dmm Agreed - without consulting a weatherman, we've been having a discussion (among a rather un-diverse group of participants) about where we are, as opposed to asking the questions Randy suggests. - Ralph
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
All of which is why we should limit our attempts to do numerical analysis for this topic, and worry far more about the basics, including such things as interaction (in)sensitivities, group tone and style, and observable misbehaviors, all of which are likely to produce biasing results. Certainly useful, but it is easy to inject one's own bias into such processes, and to overlook other factors. I may be biased, but I have the impression that the largest source of bias in IESG selection is the need to secure funding for the job, which effectively self-select people working for large companies making networking products. Gender may be the least of the problems there; there are other dimensions of diversity, e.g. academic vs. industry, network equipment versus internet service providers, software versus hardware, etc. Only a fraction of these segments can afford to have someone working full-time on the IESG. Now, having to work full time is a bit much for a volunteer position, and we may want to consider ways to remedy that. -- Christian Huitema
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 29/04/2013 01:53, Margaret Wasserman wrote: Hi Tom, On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are, e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack of ability. […] If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world - which could in extremes.. Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of these groups? Where is this coming from? You are putting up strawmen, so that you can tear them down… The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. The evidence seems to be that human's are terrible at guessing statistics, and the only statistics that are reliable as those objectively gathered and subjected to rigorous statistical analysis. You can often see this in human assessments of risk. It is also in the nature of statistics that you get long runs of outliers, and that only when you take a long view to you see the averages you would expect. Again Humans are terrible with this, assuming for example that a coin that comes up heads 10 times in a row the assumption is that this is bias, and not a normal statistical variation that you would expect in an infinite number of throws. Given the diversity ratios that we see, it is unclear to me whether we are observing a systematic effect or a statistical effect. It would be useful to the discussion if we could see data on diversity that was the output of a rigorous statistical analysis. i.e. one that included a confidence analysis and not a simple average in a few spot years. - Stewart
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 29/04/2013 05:05, Michael StJohns wrote: At 08:53 PM 4/28/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote: The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG. By my count (using the WG chairs picture page), there are 202 current working group chairs. Of these 15 are female - or 7.4% of the population [It would be more reliable to do this for any WG chair in the last 5-10 years, but the above was readily available and I think provides at least the basis for discussion. Anticipating the argument, I would assume for the sake of discussion a fairly similar percentage of ex-working group chairs per gender unless there is evidence to the contrary] There are 14 (current area directors plus the chair) members of the IESG, of which none are currently female. There are 12 current IAB members of which 1 member is female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 14 * (15/202) or 1.03 IESG members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 12 * (15/202) or .89 IAB members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 26 * (15/202) or 1.93 IAB + IESG members should be female. And pretending for a moment that picks for the IAB and IESG are completely random from the candidate set of Working group chairs, the binomial distribution for 7.4% for 27 positions is: 0 - 12.5%, 1 - 27.0%, 2 - 28.1%, 3 or more - 32.5%. (e.g. about 40% of the time, the IAB and IESG combined will have 0 or 1 female members). for 7.4% for 15 positions (IESG) is: 0 - 31.4%, 1 - 37.8%, 2 - 21.2%, 3 or more - 9.5% for 7.4% for 12 positions (IAB) is: 0 - 39.6%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 16.8%, 3 or more - 5.4% But the actual one you should consider is 7.4% for 14 positions (annual replacement): 0 - 34%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 19.9%, 3 or more - 8%. This last one says that for any given nomcom selection, assuming strict random selection, 72% of the time 0 or 1 females will be selected across both the IAB and IESG. You should use this one as the actual compositions of the IAB/IESG are the sum of all the nomcom actions that have happened before. There are statistical tests to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in populations, but my admittedly ancient memories of statistics suggest that the population size of the IAB/IESG is too small for a statistically valid comparison with either the WG chair population or the IETF population. Of course, the nomcom doesn't select and the confirming bodies do not confirm based on a roll of the dice. But looking at this analysis, it's unclear - for this one axis of gender - that the question why the diversity of the IETF leadership does not reflect the diversity of the set of IETF WG chairs has a more correct answer than the luck of the draw. My base premise may be incorrect: That you need to have been a WG chair prior to service as an IAB or IESG member. I hope it isn't as I think this level of expertise is useful for success in these bodies. Assuming it is correct, then the next question is whether or not there is a significant difference in percentage of female attendees vs percentage of female working group chairs and is there a root cause for that difference that the IETF can address in a useful manner. Mike This is in line with my own estimate based on an approximation of 1:10 which with random selection gives an error approximation of sqrt(1)=1 The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of bias that only average out in the long run. So you will get long runs of 0. Very infrequently you will also get long runs of 27. In both cases it is in human nature to would assume something is wrong, when it is an artifact of random numbers. Humans have considerable difficulty discriminating between systematic and statistical problems, and taking the long view rather than the short view. For that reason, as I noted in my previous post, we need a rigorous statistical analysis with proper confidence intervals, rather than simple averages on spot years. - Stewart
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 29/04/2013 06:57, Dave Crocker wrote: On 4/28/2013 10:52 PM, Christian Huitema wrote: Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions. Mike actually mentioned that. Let's assume a simplified curriculum of participant - author/editor - WG chair - IESG, which more or less reflects increasing seniority in the IETF. We may suspect that there is bias that, at each step, privileges some candidates over others. However, the mechanisms are different at each step. Exactly. Complicated processes, needing high quality data that gets complicated analysis, that we aren't well-enough trained to do well and aren't going to be doing. Dave Of all the social mixes you would anticipate the IETF to be in the likely to do it, likely to do it correctly quadrant. Stewart
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/29/2013 2:15 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote: On 29/04/2013 06:57, Dave Crocker wrote: Exactly. Complicated processes, needing high quality data that gets complicated analysis, that we aren't well-enough trained to do well and aren't going to be doing. Dave Of all the social mixes you would anticipate the IETF to be in the likely to do it, likely to do it correctly quadrant. If by 'it', you mean statistical analysis of human behavior, no. I'd expect our group methodology to be exactly as poor at it as we are... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
--On Monday, April 29, 2013 09:55 +0100 Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com wrote: The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. The evidence seems to be that human's are terrible at guessing statistics, and the only statistics that are reliable as those objectively gathered and subjected to rigorous statistical analysis. I mostly agree with this, but it means that attempts at statistical measurement of populations we can't really characterize are irrelevant. In particular, as soon as one talks about the diversity of _the IETF_, one is talking about the participant population. There is no evidence at all, and some evidences to the contrary, that the attendee population is a good surrogate (approximation to a random sample, if you prefer) for the participant population. Making that assumption by polling or measuring the attendee function and assuming it is representative of the IETF may introduce far more biases than most of what we are talking about. You can often see this in human assessments of risk. It is also in the nature of statistics that you get long runs of outliers, and that only when you take a long view to you see the averages you would expect. Again Humans are terrible with this, assuming for example that a coin that comes up heads 10 times in a row the assumption is that this is bias, and not a normal statistical variation that you would expect in an infinite number of throws. On the other hand, as a loyal empirical Bayesian, I suggest that, if I observe a run of 10 heads and, as a result, bet on the next toss being heads, I am somewhat more likely to carry home my winnings at the end of the day that you are if you continue to bet on a 50-50 chance no matter how long the run gets... _even_ if the rules are normal statistical variation. Now, after an infinite number of coin tosses occur, you may be proven correct, but part of the reason for that Bayesian judgment (or a judgment based on moving average properties of the time series) is that few of us are going to be able to wait for that infinite number of tosses. It would be useful to the discussion if we could see data on diversity that was the output of a rigorous statistical analysis. i.e. one that included a confidence analysis and not a simple average in a few spot years. I agree. But I also suggest that humans are pretty good at binary comparisons and some longitudinal relationships that do not involve population samples. For example, with no effort to compare the population statistics of the IESG with the population statistics of the IETF (the precise comparison that is most susceptible to the statistical problems both of us are concerned about), it is easy to look at IESG membership longitudinally and observe that, between the early 1990s and 2010, there were always at least one, and often two or three, women on the IESG. Since then, zero.Now, based on around 17 years of moving average, I feel somewhat justified statistically in believing that something odd is happening. I would feel much more justified if we went a couple years more with no change in our procedures and how we think about things and the zero women trend continued, but that illustrates the other problems with this sort of analysis and an attempt to base it on population statistics, especially the population statistics of experimental design. First, our having these discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities to the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about it. If we end up with a woman or three on the IESG a year from now, it will basically be impossible to know whether that was -- simply a return to normal behavior after a period of deviation that could be attributed to statistical variation or -- whether it was because this discussion was effectively a consciousness-raising exercise that changed how decisions are made. The second issue is that, as in a clinical trial in which it becomes obvious (with all of those subjective human judgments as well as strict statistical ones) that one of the treatment groups is doing much better than others, it may be socially and morally unacceptable to continue the experiment in order to get cleaner statistical results. --On Monday, April 29, 2013 06:14 + Christian Huitema huit...@microsoft.com wrote: Certainly useful, but it is easy to inject one's own bias into such processes, and to overlook other factors. I may be biased, but I have the impression that the largest source of bias in IESG selection is the need to secure funding for the job, which effectively self-select people working for large companies making networking products. Or at least large companies and mostly those with a significant stake in the Internet. I agree with this impression. In principle, we could separate gender (or other) bias
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/29/2013 9:38 AM, John C Klensin wrote: First, our having these discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities to the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about it. Actually, it probably hasn't. It has raised awareness that there are people who are sensitive to the topic. It probably has raised some people's awareness that there are serious issues here and that the IETF ought to pay attention to them (better). I seriously doubt it has afforded many folk a sense of how to behave differently, and how to evaluate community and management choices in terms of diversity concerns. Let's not confuse activity with progress. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote: The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of bias that only average out in the long run. Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us a long period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long run we might expect the same statistical fluctuation to deliver unto us a stretch in which women are overrepresented in the leadership. Melinda
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
--On Monday, April 29, 2013 09:46 -0700 Dave Crocker d...@dcrocker.net wrote: On 4/29/2013 9:38 AM, John C Klensin wrote: First, our having these discussions have, I believe, already increased sensitivities to the issues and maybe even how the community thinks about it. Actually, it probably hasn't. It has raised awareness that there are people who are sensitive to the topic. It probably has raised some people's awareness that there are serious issues here and that the IETF ought to pay attention to them (better). I seriously doubt it has afforded many folk a sense of how to behave differently, and how to evaluate community and management choices in terms of diversity concerns. I am trying (temporarily) to be more optimistic than that, but I fear that you may be correct. If so, we may be in big trouble and/or wasting our time by even having this discussion. If raising awareness and sensitivity isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions differently and the only criteria the community will accept for either the existence of a problem or evidence that progress is being made is hard, frequency-based, statistical (or statistical analyses of experimental) data then, -- we can quibble endlessly about what should be measured and what the measurements mean and probably will, and -- we will never agree on quantitative criteria for progress or adequate diversity because such criteria will have the odor of preferential treatment and quotas (whether they are or not). And that applies not just to selections by the Nomcom but to all of the selections that are affected by the select people whom you know and know can do the job behavior that has been discussed at length in another thread. Let's not confuse activity with progress. Indeed. Let's also try to avoid defining progress in a way that makes even useful activity impossible. But, again, I fear you are correct about all of this. john
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
What a concept. Irrespectively Yours, John -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Melinda Shore Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 9:52 AM To: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote: The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of bias that only average out in the long run. Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us a long period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long run we might expect the same statistical fluctuation to deliver unto us a stretch in which women are overrepresented in the leadership. Melinda
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 29, 2013, at 1:08 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: If raising awareness and sensitivity isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions differently Statistical analysis shows that even when peoples' awareness is raised, biases continue to exist, not because the people are bad people, but because cognitive biases are simply not affected by consciousness raising alone. So IMHO at least, what we are looking for here is not consciousness-raising, but some method of determining if we are indeed suffering from cognitive biases here, and if so, some method for actually addressing the problem.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Did anyone notice the NPR piece this AM? http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/29/178810467/blazing-the-trail-for-female-programmers Perhaps it's time for an IETF equivalent/chapter of http://railsbridge.org/, http://blackfounders.com/, http://wisecampaign.org.uk/, etc. ... Lou On 4/29/2013 12:46 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: Let's not confuse activity with progress.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 01:38 PM 4/29/2013, Ted Lemon wrote: On Apr 29, 2013, at 1:08 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: If raising awareness and sensitivity isn't enough to get people to think about and make decisions differently Statistical analysis shows that even when peoples' awareness is raised, biases continue to exist, not because the people are bad people, but because cognitive biases are simply not affected by consciousness raising alone. So IMHO at least, what we are looking for here is not consciousness-raising, but some method of determining if we are indeed suffering from cognitive biases here, and if so, some method for actually addressing the problem. Yup. The problem here is that the sample set of leadership positions is so small its difficult to get any reasonable measure one way or the other. When you start mixing and matching gender, race, citizenship etc into the pot as possible determiners it just gets worse. The normal measure for determining whether one population is distinct from another appears to be the Chi Squared test. Throwing in a matrix of WG Chairs IAB/IESG Members Male 187 25 Female15 1 And running the calculation (http://www.quantpsy.org/chisq/chisq.htm) using the Yates' values (because the sample size is so small), there is a 79.13% chance that any observed differences in the composition of the two groups is solely due to statistical variations. And playing off of John's message, if you look around 2005 when there were 4 female members of the IAB and IESG (and assuming the same composition of WG chairs), that calculation yields something 31.4% - or 2 chances in 3 that the differences were due to something other than statistical variations. When I look at this as a pure numbers problem, I'm unable to say there is a cognitive bias in the selection process and in fact the numbers would argue against being able to say that without a much larger set of IAB/IESG members. Mike
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 01:34 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: On 4/28/2013 9:05 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG. Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions. A couple of points: Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD select chairs. I believe that most chairs are self-selected [e.g. hey AD, I want to run a BOF on this topic with the idea of forming a working group - here's the other person who might chair, what do you think? Sure - go ahead, we may twiddle with things a bit at charter formation, but you look like you know what you're doing]. With one exception (where I was asked to chair an evaluation panel), that's been my experience. Would you have evidence to the contrary? Second point: You ignored most of the post and went directly to my last question - 'If there is no statistical difference between the IAB/IESG and the WG chair set, should we then consider the relationship between the IETF attending constituency and the WG chair set?Say the average meeting had 1500 attendees. 7.4% would suggest that there are 111 female attendees. If the actual number is higher or lower it MAY represent a statistically significant difference in the composition of the two groups. Or it may not. And even then, may only have a very indirect impact in the composition of the IAB/IESG. Care to do the analysis? Later, Mike d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 01:57 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: including such things as interaction (in)sensitivities, group tone and style, and observable misbehaviors, all of which are likely to produce biasing results. But in which direction? The same thing could be said of pushing personal or cultural biases into the interpretation of group tone, style, and taking offense at behaviors which one culture might construe as offensive but for 50 other cultures is just the way things work. We have an IETF culture - like it or not. It changes over time, as the population changes. We can't and shouldn't expect to be able to change it by fiat, or to adopt as whole cloth a bias free culture (for some values of bias). Mike
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 12:51 PM 4/29/2013, Melinda Shore wrote: On 4/29/13 1:11 AM, Stewart Bryant wrote: The other thing to remember is that whilst your proportional estimates are likely to be correct, in a random process you will get long runs of bias that only average out in the long run. Right, although if normal statistical fluctuation gives us a long period of woman-free leadership, somewhere in your long run we might expect the same statistical fluctuation to deliver unto us a stretch in which women are overrepresented in the leadership. Hi Melinda - Actually, look at the time frame around 2004-5. Multiple women on the IAB and multiple women on the IESG. Almost double the expected value of 2 given the WG proportions. One of the things I saw, but didn't comment on elsewhere, was that I had noted that a number of the women who had participated as IESG or IAB members have since stopped participating (attending actually) IETF meetings. I didn't comment on it because I didn't have a good feel for whether that proportion was higher or lower than the men who have been IESG/IAB members and are now not participating. Analysis of this might yield some data on whether or not we're losing long term female participants at a higher rate than long term male participants - if so, it may be worthwhile to ask former members the why question to see if there's anything we can do to mitigate. Long term participants appear (my opinion) to be more attractive candidates for IAB/IESG positions. Mike Melinda
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Mike, On Apr 29, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: We have an IETF culture - like it or not. It changes over time, as the population changes. We can't and shouldn't expect to be able to change it by fiat, or to adopt as whole cloth a bias free culture (for some values of bias). How you do you think a culture evolves to be more inclusive? Might that start with discussions like these? Margaret
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
For what it's worth, I'm not finding the current discussion is providing me useful information for making decisions. It doesn't really matter to me whether the problem is selection of WG chairs or selection of IAB/IESG/IAOC after WG chairs are selected. I think it is valuable to attempt to improve both situations in parallel, and the sorts of conclusions being drawn from the statistical discussion we're currently having cannot possibly change my opinion on that issue. I'm not saying that my mind is closed to being changed; simply that I've considered all the possible conclusions that I think could be drawn from the analysis being considered and from my standpoint they don't affect how I'd feel about various proposals that could be brought forward. Which I guess speaks to John's point that I at least am a member of the community who doesn't think the hard statistical analysis is useful here.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 29/04/2013 20:39, Sam Hartman wrote: For what it's worth, I'm not finding the current discussion is providing me useful information for making decisions. It doesn't really matter to me whether the problem is selection of WG chairs or selection of IAB/IESG/IAOC after WG chairs are selected. I think it is valuable to attempt to improve both situations in parallel, and the sorts of conclusions being drawn from the statistical discussion we're currently having cannot possibly change my opinion on that issue. I'm not saying that my mind is closed to being changed; simply that I've considered all the possible conclusions that I think could be drawn from the analysis being considered and from my standpoint they don't affect how I'd feel about various proposals that could be brought forward. Which I guess speaks to John's point that I at least am a member of the community who doesn't think the hard statistical analysis is useful here. Sam, Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and engineering. Stewart
How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards? Was: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 03:30 PM 4/29/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote: Hi Mike, On Apr 29, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Michael StJohns mstjo...@comcast.net wrote: We have an IETF culture - like it or not. It changes over time, as the population changes. We can't and shouldn't expect to be able to change it by fiat, or to adopt as whole cloth a bias free culture (for some values of bias). How you do you think a culture evolves to be more inclusive? Might that start with discussions like these? I believe your statement implies some preconceptions - that you believe the IETF culture is not inclusive enough and that more inclusiveness will benefit the IETF. I'm not sure there's evidence to support the first - hence the numerical analysis. It may be the case that we're not inclusive enough is a correct evaluation, but see Stewart's note on the human tendency to impute patterns into random results. I would ask this instead - How does the IETF evolve to continue to be an effective, efficient, and relevant source of high quality Internet standards? If one of the answers to that question necessarily involves inclusiveness, then the conversation should go forward on that topic, but preferably not in isolation, not as the fix this now knee jerk (my perception) type of activity that seems to be going on. Let me ask a couple of specific questions of you. Who have you mentored in the past 5 years? Have they ended up as working group chairs, or ADs or IAB members? Do they mostly represent under-represented groups? How many of them were employed by your employer (e.g. was this a work related task?)? During your time as an AD, how many women did you arm twist/recruit specifically (or ask nicely) to take WG positions in your area (as opposed to them coming to you or your co-AD)? How many non-employee, under-represented population attendees is your current employer supporting to go to the IETF? Have you addressed this with your employer? Why is the inclusiveness question more of an IETF question, as opposed to one of personal actions? I'm asking the above, because I'm trying to get a calibration on what you mean by inclusiveness and how important it actually is for you, and possibly for your employer. Mike Margaret
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/29/2013 12:04 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: At 01:34 AM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD select chairs. It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of IETF procedure: ADs hire and fire wg chairs. Second point: You ignored most of the post and went directly to my last question I went to the meta-point that the line of discussion isn't methodologically meaningful or educationally useful. Possibly you noticed one or two additional postings in this sub-thread asserting the same thing. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Mon, April 29, 2013 12:39 pm, Sam Hartman wrote: For what it's worth, I'm not finding the current discussion is providing me useful information for making decisions. It doesn't really matter to me whether the problem is selection of WG chairs or selection of IAB/IESG/IAOC after WG chairs are selected. I think it is valuable to attempt to improve both situations in parallel, and the sorts of conclusions being drawn from the statistical discussion we're currently having cannot possibly change my opinion on that issue. I'm not saying that my mind is closed to being changed; simply that I've considered all the possible conclusions that I think could be drawn from the analysis being considered and from my standpoint they don't affect how I'd feel about various proposals that could be brought forward. Sounds to me like you have the cart in front of the horse. You already have in mind various proposals (interestingly left unstated) and are looking for data that can justify them being brought forward. Apparently, this data does not help you justify these proposals so you find no use discussing in it. Maybe we should let the data drive the proposals instead of the other way around. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Stewart == Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com writes: Stewart Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems Stewart akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something that matters for your decision criteria. Let's take Mike's most recent messages here. It doesn't actually matter to me whether the problem in gender diversity is at the nomcom level or at the wg chair selection level. So, a statistical discussion of whether there's bias in nomcom choosing leaders from the wg chairs does not provide input that matters in my decision criteria, so I disregard that particular analysis. I certainly did not mean to imply that I disregard statistics, or even disregard statistics in diversity discussions. Simply, I don't find the statistical discussion here pointful, and I think it's a sufficient distraction that I felt a need to speak out about it.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 2013-04-29, at 16:49, Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu wrote: Stewart == Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com writes: Stewart Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems Stewart akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something that matters for your decision criteria. http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png Joe
Re: [IETF] Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 29, 2013, at 4:55 PM, Joe Abley jab...@hopcount.ca wrote: On 2013-04-29, at 16:49, Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu wrote: Stewart == Stewart Bryant stbry...@cisco.com writes: Stewart Why would you disregard a statistical analysis? That seems Stewart akin to disregarding the fundamentals of science and Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something that matters for your decision criteria. http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png Wow, that *was* useful, and has helped reinforce my belief that I chose the right browser -- Think of the children, don't use IE. Couldn't resist: http://xkcd.com/552/ W Joe -- There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and straong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum! or Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch! -- Terry Pratchett
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/29/2013 2:20 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: At 04:40 PM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD select chairs. It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of IETF procedure: ADs hire and fire wg chairs. The AD's do have the final say. No question. But select implies that the own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope. They do own it; that's a formal truth. That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices means nothing, in terms of their authority. Don't confuse efficiency hacks with formal authority. d/ ps. I'm sure this was really quite an important point to debate, relative to problems with IETF diversity and culture. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Mon, April 29, 2013 2:28 pm, Dave Crocker wrote: On 4/29/2013 2:20 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: At 04:40 PM 4/29/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD select chairs. It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of IETF procedure: ADs hire and fire wg chairs. The AD's do have the final say. No question. But select implies that the own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope. They do own it; that's a formal truth. That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices means nothing, in terms of their authority. But it might mean something in terms of the discussion at hand. If the ADs are concurring with self-organizing choices as opposed to selecting WG chairs, then they aren't really imposing a looks like me bias into the selection process. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Mike: Actually, I don't think this is even a mostly correct statement - that AD select chairs. Dave: It is a long-standing, simple, objective, unvarying management fact of IETF procedure: ADs hire and fire wg chairs. Mike: The AD's do have the final say. No question. But select implies that the own the entire process of creating and staffing a WG. Nope. Dave: They do own it; that's a formal truth. That they often delegate details and concur with self-organizing choices means nothing, in terms of their authority. Dan: But it might mean something in terms of the discussion at hand. If the ADs are concurring with self-organizing choices as opposed to selecting WG chairs, then they aren't really imposing a looks like me bias into the selection process. OK, here: I have to step in now. Let me look at the new working group chairs and BoF chairs in the App Area (as that's my area) since I've been an AD (one year, so far). Chair changes: APPSAWG: added Murray Kucherawy and Salvatore Loreto CORE: added Andrew McGregor IRI: added Peter Saint-Andre New working groups WEIRDS: Olaf Kolkman and Murray Kucherawy SCIM: Morteza Ansari and Leif Johansson SPFBIS: SM and Andrew Sullivan IMAPMOVE: Ned Freed and Alexey Melnikov JCARDCAL: Bert Greevenbosch and Peter Saint-Andre QRESYNC: Dave Cridland and Eliot Lear BoFs at IETF 83: SCIM: Eliot Lear and Steve Bellovin WEIRDS: Andrew Sullivan BoFs at IETF 84: DSII: Beth Pale and Ted Hardie BoFs at IETF 86: AGGSRV: Peter Saint-Andre JSON: Joe Hildebrand In all but one of these cases, we (the ADs) contacted people and *asked* them to chair. The exception was DSII and Beth Pale, but this was not a working-group-forming BoF (and Ted was the one we solicited). For the SCIM working group, Morteza was one of the proponents of the IETF 83 BoF, but he did not ask to be chair, and *I asked him* only after consulting with folks and getting opinions that suggested that he would be a good choice. That has generally been my approach and Pete's to finding chairs: getting opinions other than our own. We have a couple of other new chartering efforts in process, and we'll be handling those similarly: selecting people we think will be appropriate to chair those working groups. Of course, if someone comes to us and says that they'd like to chair a working group, we will take that into consideration. But we most certainly do NOT simply appoint people because they're technology proponents, nor because they ask us to. My sense of the rest of the IESG is that they behave similarly. I can tell you unequivocally that the ADs appoint the chairs, and own the entire process of [...] staffing a WG. We are not just taking the people who come to us and saying, Yeah, sure, you'll do. We also want to find new chairs -- in the working-group chairs list above, Andrew, Morteza, SM, Bert, and Dave are all first-time chairs. Pete and I are also actively looking to increase the diversity in App Area chairs -- perhaps you'll notice that we have *no* female chairs in the App Area, at least partly because we have no women who are active in the App Area just now. We're working on that (and on other diversity aspects) -- see, for example, the first item here: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-apparea-0.pdf We're always eager for suggestions for people to be on our list of potential chairs; please send such to app-...@tools.ietf.org. And, yes, we *do* own the staffing process. Barry, Applications AD
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 30/04/2013 08:49, Sam Hartman wrote: ... Statistical analysis is only useful if it's going to tell you something that matters for your decision criteria. Yes. And I would like to know, in statistical terms, whether there are significant differences between (for example) the M/F ratios among (a) IETF registrants, (b) active participants, (c) WG chairs secretaries and (d) I* members. [Discussion on the objective definition of active participation is deferred for now.] The null hypothesis would be that no significant differences exist. If that turns out to be true, we know that our problem is only lack of diversity among registrants. If it turns out to be false, we know that we have an internal problem of some kind as well. Brian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Brian == Brian E Carpenter brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com writes: Brian The null hypothesis would be that no significant differences Brian exist. If that turns out to be true, we know that our Brian problem is only lack of diversity among registrants. If it Brian turns out to be false, we know that we have an internal Brian problem of some kind as well. Yes. I'll admit that that particular question--which is far more involved than the numbers I've seen thrown around to date--is somewhat interesting. Although while it influences how I'd think about deciding on proposals, there's no answer to that question that has a clear set of decisions for me, even ignoring questions about methodology, definitions of participants, etc, etc. 1) I may believe that increasing diversity among leadership so that the leadership is more diverse than the population as a whole will help increase diversity of the population. 2) I may believe that the diversity of the leadership is more of a problem in terms of either quality of spec or credibility of organization than diversity of the participants/registrants. But you've definitely started to get into a realm where the statistics are more interesting to me. And i'll drop this now, because I realize I'm only one participant and I discussion that doesn't provide helpful information for me may well provide useful information for others.
Re: User Culture or Management (was Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?)
retransmited (not received at IETF or published) On 4/29/13, Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Mike, (sorry for my long message, will try to improve) I like the concept and reasoning of your message, and would like to add, is there other reasons for the results and conclusion your message got to? Is there something we can fix in the ietf-culture or ietf-procedures to make the diversity more established? I think that female managers/leaders are important to any world-organisation to get successful, and to be specific, I will recommend all world NPOs (Non-Profit Org.) need gender diversity (male or female, which one may be minority) at *least* 10-20 percent of management teams. An NPO with all male or all female management is not successful for the world of diverse *gender* and *users*. Management skills if gender-diversed will reflect better community involvement, choices, culture, and decisions. IMHO, Organisation Management objectives are to make 1) *users* increase in numbers, 2) increase in diverse, and 3) increase in satisfaction. If only present/current users select the management there is no dought that their decisions reflect users-culture and awareness, but do they increase the three objectives. My concerns in the diversity issue is to focus on the diversity of *management-gender* and *ietf-users* to benefit future decisions and make *awareness* into the ietf-culture. Your message discussed both but for the diversity of ietf-users not in similar depth compared with gender, which I think you may help me understand/evaluate its diverse in ietf. Regards, AB ++ From: Michael StJohns mstjohns at comcast.net To: Margaret Wasserman mrw at lilacglade.org,t.p. daedulus at btconnect.com Cc: ietf at ietf.org Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:05:37 -0400 Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG. By my count (using the WG chairs picture page), there are 202 current working group chairs. Of these 15 are female - or 7.4% of the population [It would be more reliable to do this for any WG chair in the last 5-10 years, but the above was readily available and I think provides at least the basis for discussion. Anticipating the argument, I would assume for the sake of discussion a fairly similar percentage of ex-working group chairs per gender unless there is evidence to the contrary] There are 14 (current area directors plus the chair) members of the IESG, of which none are currently female. There are 12 current IAB members of which 1 member is female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 14 * (15/202) or 1.03 IESG members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 12 * (15/202) or .89 IAB members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 26 * (15/202) or 1.93 IAB + IESG members should be female. And pretending for a moment that picks for the IAB and IESG are completely random from the candidate set of Working group chairs, the binomial distribution for 7.4% for 27 positions is: 0 - 12.5%, 1 - 27.0%, 2 - 28.1%, 3 or more - 32.5%. (e.g. about 40% of the time, the IAB and IESG combined will have 0 or 1 female members). for 7.4% for 15 positions (IESG) is: 0 - 31.4%, 1 - 37.8%, 2 - 21.2%, 3 or more - 9.5% for 7.4% for 12 positions (IAB) is: 0 - 39.6%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 16.8%, 3 or more - 5.4% But the actual one you should consider is 7.4% for 14 positions (annual replacement): 0 - 34%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 19.9%, 3 or more - 8%. This last one says that for any given nomcom selection, assuming strict random selection, 72% of the time 0 or 1 females will be selected across both the IAB and IESG. You should use this one as the actual compositions of the IAB/IESG are the sum of all the nomcom actions that have happened before. There are statistical tests to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in populations, but my admittedly ancient memories of statistics suggest that the population size of the IAB/IESG is too small for a statistically valid comparison with either the WG chair population or the IETF population. Of course, the nomcom doesn't select and the confirming bodies do not confirm based on a roll of the dice. But looking at this analysis, it's unclear - for this one axis of gender - that the question why the diversity of the IETF leadership does not reflect the diversity of the set of IETF WG chairs has a more correct answer than the luck of the draw. My base premise may be incorrect: That you need to have been a WG chair prior to service as an IAB or IESG member. I hope it isn't as I think this level of expertise
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Tom, On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are, e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack of ability. […] If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world - which could in extremes.. Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of these groups? Where is this coming from? You are putting up strawmen, so that you can tear them down… The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. There is no inherent reason why 40+-year-old, white, western males who work at large networking equipment vendors are inherently more capable of serving on the IESG than people from other groups within the IETF, and there would be _considerable internal benefit_ to having an IESG that was more diverse, because diverse groups make better decisions and better represent the needs of the whole organization. Therefore, if there is something about our culture, our structure, our selection process, or the way we run our meetings that is causing us to predominantly select our leadership from a restricted group, we would have _more capable_ and _better_ leadership if we could find a way to broaden that pool. _That_ is what this discussion is about. This is not an effort to meet some externally imposed notion of diversity. Margaret
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 04/29/2013 07:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman wrote: Hi Tom, On Apr 19, 2013, at 6:03 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are, e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack of ability. […] If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world - which could in extremes.. Has anyone even suggested that IESG should reflect the diversity of these groups? Where is this coming from? You are putting up strawmen, so that you can tear them down… The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. There is no inherent reason why 40+-year-old, white, western males who work at large networking equipment vendors are inherently more capable of serving on the IESG than people from other groups within the IETF, and there would be _considerable internal benefit_ to having an IESG that was more diverse, because diverse groups make better decisions and better represent the needs of the whole organization. Therefore, if there is something about our culture, our structure, our selection process, or the way we run our meetings that is causing us to predominantly select our leadership from a restricted group, we would have _more capable_ and _better_ leadership if we could find a way to broaden that pool. It seems like everybody in the IETF is already in that pool. After all, any participant can self-nominate for an AD position; how can the pool get any bigger? _That_ is what this discussion is about. Really? It appeared to me that the discussion arose because some people were unhappy about the makeup of the IESG, not the selection pool. However, if what you're saying is true, that's great: since the selection pool is already universally inclusive, problem solved we can turn our seemingly limitless capacity for bickering to other purposes ;-) . This is not an effort to meet some externally imposed notion of diversity. Margaret
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 08:53 PM 4/28/2013, Margaret Wasserman wrote: The question that people are asking is why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of _the IETF_. Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG. By my count (using the WG chairs picture page), there are 202 current working group chairs. Of these 15 are female - or 7.4% of the population [It would be more reliable to do this for any WG chair in the last 5-10 years, but the above was readily available and I think provides at least the basis for discussion. Anticipating the argument, I would assume for the sake of discussion a fairly similar percentage of ex-working group chairs per gender unless there is evidence to the contrary] There are 14 (current area directors plus the chair) members of the IESG, of which none are currently female. There are 12 current IAB members of which 1 member is female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 14 * (15/202) or 1.03 IESG members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 12 * (15/202) or .89 IAB members should be female. Assuming perfect distribution, that would suggest that 26 * (15/202) or 1.93 IAB + IESG members should be female. And pretending for a moment that picks for the IAB and IESG are completely random from the candidate set of Working group chairs, the binomial distribution for 7.4% for 27 positions is: 0 - 12.5%, 1 - 27.0%, 2 - 28.1%, 3 or more - 32.5%. (e.g. about 40% of the time, the IAB and IESG combined will have 0 or 1 female members). for 7.4% for 15 positions (IESG) is: 0 - 31.4%, 1 - 37.8%, 2 - 21.2%, 3 or more - 9.5% for 7.4% for 12 positions (IAB) is: 0 - 39.6%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 16.8%, 3 or more - 5.4% But the actual one you should consider is 7.4% for 14 positions (annual replacement): 0 - 34%, 1 - 38.1%, 2 - 19.9%, 3 or more - 8%. This last one says that for any given nomcom selection, assuming strict random selection, 72% of the time 0 or 1 females will be selected across both the IAB and IESG. You should use this one as the actual compositions of the IAB/IESG are the sum of all the nomcom actions that have happened before. There are statistical tests to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in populations, but my admittedly ancient memories of statistics suggest that the population size of the IAB/IESG is too small for a statistically valid comparison with either the WG chair population or the IETF population. Of course, the nomcom doesn't select and the confirming bodies do not confirm based on a roll of the dice. But looking at this analysis, it's unclear - for this one axis of gender - that the question why the diversity of the IETF leadership does not reflect the diversity of the set of IETF WG chairs has a more correct answer than the luck of the draw. My base premise may be incorrect: That you need to have been a WG chair prior to service as an IAB or IESG member. I hope it isn't as I think this level of expertise is useful for success in these bodies. Assuming it is correct, then the next question is whether or not there is a significant difference in percentage of female attendees vs percentage of female working group chairs and is there a root cause for that difference that the IETF can address in a useful manner. Mike
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/28/2013 9:05 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: Let's consider for a moment that this may not actually be the correct question. Instead, consider Why the diversity of the IETF leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the set of the IETF WG chairs? I believe this is a more representative candidate population for the IAB and IESG. Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions. Mike actually mentioned that. Let's assume a simplified curriculum of participant - author/editor - WG chair - IESG, which more or less reflects increasing seniority in the IETF. We may suspect that there is bias that, at each step, privileges some candidates over others. However, the mechanisms are different at each step. Self-selection, selection by WG chair, selection by the nom com. It makes sense to assess the filtering effect of each step independently, and in particular to assess the nomcom by comparing the pool of WG chairs to the selected nominees. -- Christian Huitema
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/28/2013 10:52 PM, Christian Huitema wrote: Except that the IESG members select the wg chairs, which makes your baseline stastistic suspect; it's too easy for all sorts of biasing factors to sway the allocation of wg chair positions. Mike actually mentioned that. Let's assume a simplified curriculum of participant - author/editor - WG chair - IESG, which more or less reflects increasing seniority in the IETF. We may suspect that there is bias that, at each step, privileges some candidates over others. However, the mechanisms are different at each step. Exactly. Complicated processes, needing high quality data that gets complicated analysis, that we aren't well-enough trained to do well and aren't going to be doing. All of which is why we should limit our attempts to do numerical analysis for this topic, and worry far more about the basics, including such things as interaction (in)sensitivities, group tone and style, and observable misbehaviors, all of which are likely to produce biasing results. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
A statistician? This entire thread is basically arguing that the IETF needs a human resources department. Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/ From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter [brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com] Sent: 18 April 2013 16:43 To: Pete Resnick Cc: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? On 18/04/2013 16:28, Pete Resnick wrote: ... That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do. This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and subconscious biases get in the way. Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant bias in the selection process over the years. Brian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Andrew Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience (did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly), mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural argument. I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience. AB
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
- Original Message - From: Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org To: Andrew Sullivan a...@anvilwalrusden.com Cc: ietf@ietf.org Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 4:59 AM On Thu, April 18, 2013 6:44 pm, Andrew Sullivan wrote: On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:17:21AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote: So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. Well, that is certainly not the message that I read. What I read was that the I* leadership is 97% male (and 97% white) and that alone puts into question the legitimacy of the IETF as an International Standards Development Organization. tp Yes, that is the message I am getting from this thread and it seems to me to be a canard that originates from outside the IETF, perhaps in groups promoting Diversity and Rights, as opposed to engineering. I have encountered many network experts in my day job yet within the IETF, I encounter a large number of seriously talented people, active on many mailing lists, who are in a different league to the former group. If we required the IETF to reflect the diversity of people who are, e.g., IT network professionals, then the IETF would fall apart for lack of ability. And the IETF is unusual in its leadership. Some organisations promote the technically able, regardless of their lack of management skills, and suffer as a result. Leaders need to lead, and manage, and delegate the technical aspects of the work. The IETF is different. WG Chairs and ADs must have world-class technical skills - if anything, I think that this comes at the expense of leadership, and sometimes wish that WG Chairs and ADs had more management skills, but recognise that that must not be at the expense of the technical skills. Even so, being the most brilliant editor of, say, a new security standard does not mean that the person would make a good AD. If the ADs of the IETF have to represent the diversity of the world - which could in extremis be construed as so many Chinese, so many Indians, so many Africans etc - then the IETF would be a less effective, probably an ineffective, organisation. So what's the problem? And who says so? Tom Petch /tp If people are encountering a chilly environment then that is a different issue. It has been a few IETFs since I've heard someone approach the mic and say that is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time and a few more since it was said to me. That kind of brusqueness is part of our culture but I think it can be off-putting and a barrier to contributing. New people get intimidated around a bunch of aggressive type-A personalities and may be reluctant to present or contribute for fear of being put down. If we want to make the IETF a less chilly place that is more inviting and we want to encourage participation maybe we should address our cultural tics and idiosyncrasies that represent a barrier to entry rather than enumerate the women who have registered for a meeting. (And yes, I am talking about myself). regards, Dan.
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Female ADs include Allison Mankin, whose bio recently appeared on this list in relation to her new appointment. There's now a diversity discussion list, where this discussion should move to. http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/04/diversity/ Does what you think matter, when you clearly don't know anything? Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/ From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam Baryun [abdussalambar...@gmail.com] Sent: 19 April 2013 10:37 To: a...@anvilwalrusden.com Cc: ietf Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? Andrew Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience (did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly), mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural argument. I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience. AB
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
No name in the AD list appear so far, but if your the discuss-list is right then it may be good progress, hoping for more names for diversity. Your input not helping discussion, AB On 4/19/13, l.w...@surrey.ac.uk l.w...@surrey.ac.uk wrote: Female ADs include Allison Mankin, whose bio recently appeared on this list in relation to her new appointment. There's now a diversity discussion list, where this discussion should move to. http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/04/diversity/ Does what you think matter, when you clearly don't know anything? Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/ From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam Baryun [abdussalambar...@gmail.com] Sent: 19 April 2013 10:37 To: a...@anvilwalrusden.com Cc: ietf Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? Andrew Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. The environment may not be chilly, but may be unaware of experience (did we experience a woman as AD?). The IETF culture can be defined IMO as a argumental experience (firstly) plus technical (secondly), mostly men argue for long (may get unsensitive) but women may not fancy that. The participants' bias is not in technical experience it is in argumental, which is not true that all discussions on the IETF lists are technical, most of the time just men arguing and when they get lost in technical they get backed up with the consensus procedural argument. I don't think women were given a chance to proof their ability to lead the IETF, so men can be aware of new experience. AB
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 19 April 2013 at 12:22 Abdussalam Baryun abdussalambar...@gmail.com wrote on this list: No name in the AD list appear so far, but if your the discuss-list is right then it may be good progress, hoping for more names for diversity. I count three ADs on the diversity discussion list at the moment. Why is my count different from yours? Adrian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Eliot, On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote: Dan, On 4/17/13 9:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: We already know who we are. I disagree. We make a whole lot of assumptions about who we are, but we don't actually know, and that's why the question is being asked. I would clarify that IMHO the only reason this question should be asked is for demographic purposes, along with others. Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up of those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not representative of who we are because we are more than just the people who register to go to any particular meeting. And ...the only reason...along with others? So then it's not only for demographic purposes. Those other purposes aside from the only one are what, exactly? This question is trying to decide our gender make up and nothing good can come of it. It will provide more evidence for people to make use of logical fallacies-- if P implies Q then look we now have evidence of Q therefore P-- which really have no place in an organization devoted to engineering. This would be putting the cart before the horse. We first need to understand facts. If we don't understand facts, then people will continue on assumptions. The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly white and male. The fallacy works like this: If there was bias in favor of white males then we would have a leadership that is predominantly white and male. We have a leadership that is predominantly white and male, therefore we have bias. All this question will do is provide a snapshot in time of just how predominant it is-- 5% female, oh that's bad, 8% female, oh my look how skewed the I* leadership is. See, it's skewed therefore we have bias! If P then Q, and Q (we now have the numbers!) therefore P. And it will be used as a baseline for doing work towards some goal that has not been justified, work whose very nature requires treating people according to what they are instead of who they are. Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. I don't recall seeing any evidence of bias being presented on this list. And I don't believe there is any problem has been mentioned that we had or have that is caused by this predominance of white men. It's just been stated as a problem itself. We must have less white men. Why? Because, that's why. Nobody has proposed that, and I think you can put a bit more faith in your peers to not make important decisions based on because. What has been accepted is that diversity is good. Further, it has been stated that we cannot remove the race and gender from the problem statement about our lack of diversity. As Margaret said, I don't think it is possible for [sic] remove race and gender from the list of axes, though, since there is a notable lack of diversity in those areas. So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? What problem can we point to, now or in the past, that is the result of this lack of race and gender diversity? Well? Hmmm? Anyone? Bueller? No, nothing. So in lieu of nothing all we have is because. If you don't like because as a reason then fine, I will concede the point: decisions will be made for no reason at all! That hardly seems better. And now the only action I see out of this whole diversity discussion on the list is a plan to ask the gender of registrants for the Berlin meeting. If this is just some innocent question to find out who we are then why don't we ask about the size of the organization we work for? We all agree that we have a diversity problem on that axis and there is a skew for large corporations. No, the question is just about gender. Sadly, I can't put much faith in my peers to make important decisions because they're asking the wrong questions so they can gather data while working on addressing a non-problem. regards, Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to talk about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely that there are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think it's useful to think about. On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote: Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been a WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted IDs) there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women. Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole diversity conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through attendance lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over the past 10 years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 18:1 (with so much variability due to guessing on the basis of names), and it's seemed pretty consistent over the last 10 years. Over the past 5 years, the ratio of Nomcom members (randomly selected from the community) is about 10:1, which is consistent with those numbers. That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do. This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and subconscious biases get in the way. pr -- Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 18, 2013, at 17:17, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote: Why is this a problem? I think you are more likely to ask this question if you think that if it is a problem, then we *have* to solve it, e.g. by shooting enough of the white male people in the IETF that the numbers balance. It is not that kind of problem. It is, however, a situation that a sizable part of the community have experience with. The experience that, if you find ways to improve diversity where the cure is *not* worse than the ailment, the quality of the work actually improves from that. You may simply not have that experience -- it wouldn't surprise me, as differences in personal experience are usually the most important reason why people incessantly argue. Grüße, Carsten
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 18/04/2013 16:28, Pete Resnick wrote: ... That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do. This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and subconscious biases get in the way. Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant bias in the selection process over the years. Brian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Self inflicted confusion. Please see below: On 4/18/13 5:17 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: Hi Eliot, On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote: Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up of those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not representative of who we are because we are more than just the people who register to go to any particular meeting. And let's stop there. The point of my originally muddled note was that we shouldn't just ask about gender. For that I apologize. Also, I wouldn't do this just one time. The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly white and male. The fallacy works like this: We don't have facts in evidence, and as I wrote above, I'm not even sure we know which facts we need. I can say that gender is probably one, country of residence is something we have, age is something we don't ask, but we do ask how many meetings you've been to. We don't ask why you're at the IETF and we don't ask which groups are important to you. We don't ask whether you plan to attend other IETFs and we don't ask anyone who has attended an IETF but isn't back, why they didn't show. We don't ask questions about the experience, in terms of how people are able to find their way through the process. There are many questions we don't ask. Now granted, some of this is more than who we are, but also how easy are we to work with. How does language and location play into this? Personally I'd love to survey people going to OTHER standards organizations and find out why they chose those other organizations to pursue work, but then I'm not footing the bill for all of this, so... This is not just about one attribute. You're ALMOST right in that a lot of us know each other. Perhaps that's even a problem, in that others can't break in. Much of this is what I would expect the diversity team to explore. Eliot
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Age, IQ, shoe size? (Ideally, they should be equal.) Irrespectively Yours, John -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Eliot Lear Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:01 AM To: Dan Harkins Cc: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? Self inflicted confusion. Please see below: On 4/18/13 5:17 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: Hi Eliot, On Wed, April 17, 2013 12:48 pm, Eliot Lear wrote: Pardon me, but that makes no sense. Asking about the gender make-up of those who elect to register for a future meeting is going to tell us little about who we are. It will be a snapshot in time and it will not representative of who we are because we are more than just the people who register to go to any particular meeting. And let's stop there. The point of my originally muddled note was that we shouldn't just ask about gender. For that I apologize. Also, I wouldn't do this just one time. The facts are already not in dispute. The I* leadership is predominantly white and male. The fallacy works like this: We don't have facts in evidence, and as I wrote above, I'm not even sure we know which facts we need. I can say that gender is probably one, country of residence is something we have, age is something we don't ask, but we do ask how many meetings you've been to. We don't ask why you're at the IETF and we don't ask which groups are important to you. We don't ask whether you plan to attend other IETFs and we don't ask anyone who has attended an IETF but isn't back, why they didn't show. We don't ask questions about the experience, in terms of how people are able to find their way through the process. There are many questions we don't ask. Now granted, some of this is more than who we are, but also how easy are we to work with. How does language and location play into this? Personally I'd love to survey people going to OTHER standards organizations and find out why they chose those other organizations to pursue work, but then I'm not footing the bill for all of this, so... This is not just about one attribute. You're ALMOST right in that a lot of us know each other. Perhaps that's even a problem, in that others can't break in. Much of this is what I would expect the diversity team to explore. Eliot
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Eliot Lear l...@cisco.com wrote: Dan, On 4/16/13 2:00 AM, Dan Harkins wrote: Under the belief of garbage in, garbage out, I tend to lie on these sorts of repugnant questions. I invite others to join me. The more suspect the quality of the data, the less value it has. Dan. Please don't. We are trying to understand who we are. Is that SO unreasonable? I don't object to filling out forms, and I would certainly answer honestly. Who is we? Just people who go to the Berlin IETF? - does it include remote participants via Jabber or other tools - does it include people who participate only on WG mailing lists? The only bias I see is that it takes a lot of employer backing and funding to participate in the IESG. It is therefore the companies that sponsor these participants have the most influence of all over the selection process. Hold another IETF in San Jose or San Francisco and I bet we get way more balanced data than a site that requires a lot of travel, especially since we have day passes now. Eliot Andy
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, April 18, 2013 8:34 am, Carsten Bormann wrote: On Apr 18, 2013, at 17:17, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote: Why is this a problem? I think you are more likely to ask this question if you think that if it is a problem, then we *have* to solve it, e.g. by shooting enough of the white male people in the IETF that the numbers balance. It is not that kind of problem. Well that's a relief! As a white male (I know, a surprise, right?) I'm glad to know I am not going to get shot. It is, however, a situation that a sizable part of the community have experience with. I have been attended at least 40 IETFs over the past 18 years or so. I certainly have experience with this situation. What is new, though, is the statement that this situation is, in fact, a problem. The experience that, if you find ways to improve diversity where the cure is *not* worse than the ailment, the quality of the work actually improves from that. What is this cure of which you speak? This diversity discussion has included statements like: If the intent is to emphasize diversity (for some metric) over one of the core skills [technical clue, admin skills, ability to work with others], that's certainly possible. and, A small point to watch for, if there is a focus on a defined list of groups [and there certainly appears to be one-- gender], is the difference between discriminating /against/, versus ensuring representation /from/. So? Are we going to emphasize diversity over core skills? Say that one's gender or skin color matters more than their technical clue or their ability to work with others? By what method are we going to ensure representation? And what do we do if these efforts have not resulted in the proportions that are deemed to be acceptable? Use a little more force? Quotas? Nobody has stated what the cure is for this situation so we don't know whether it will be worse than the ailment. There is a huge gap between encouraging more women to volunteer and shooting white men. And I really don't think we need to count the gender make-up of a meeting if our cure was going to something close to encouraging more women to volunteer. regards, Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 11:43 AM 4/18/2013, Brian E Carpenter wrote: Indeed. Ideally, though, we need a statistician to look at the historical ratios (e.g. M/F ratios) in the attendee lists vs the I* membership, to see whether there is a statistically significant bias in the selection process over the years. Brian Yup. We have: 1) The difference in composition between the world as a whole and the IETF. 2) The difference in composition between the industrialized nations as a whole and the IETF. 3) The difference in composition between the set of small medium and large networking companies as a whole and the IETF. 4) The difference in composition between the IETF (for some measure of that) and the composition of the set of IETF working group chairs. 5) The difference in composition between the set of IETF working group chairs and the set of members of the IAB and IESG. 6) The difference in composition between the IETF and the composition of the IAOC. All of these are somewhat interesting statistical analysis problems. My guess (without looking at the numbers) is the (1) is pretty large. (2) is still large, but substantially less than (1), (3) is quite a bit smaller than (1) or (2) - all of these for pretty much any axis you want to evaluate. For your question, I differentiated between the IAOC and the IAB/IESG for one specific reason - an injected bias for the second group that mostly says that paying your dues as a working group chair is a pre and sometimes co requisite for becoming a member of the IAB or IESG. I'm pretty sure the injected bias for the IAOC is business experience of some sort. I haven't seen anything on the list that suggests there's selection bias for working group chairs - it's possible there is, but I can't actually recall any complaints going back say 10 years where the selection of a working group chair was intimated to be biased based on gender or any other criteria. Given that the positions are about 90% self-selection and 10% area director approval, I don't know how you could do bias analysis there and get meaningful results. That's question (4). We can provide a statistical number for the difference, but the why is going to be elusive. So going forward, what I think we should be more interested in is not so much the composition of the IETF, but the composition of the set of WG chairs and how that population compares to the set of IESG and IAB members. That's question (5). That question doesn't need to be asked on the registration forms for Berlin. I'm not sure we have enough history yet for question (6). I will note that besides the must have been a WG chair bias, we also have a sell by date bias, especially for IESG members. By that I mean that a perfectly qualified candidate for the IESG who has been serving in that position for say 6 years is less desirable than one who has similar qualifications but hasn't yet served and may end up being considered disqualified even if fully qualified. That bias is written into the 3777 considerations as is the WG chair bias. It may be useful to take the set of current (or last 5 year) chairs, and subtract out any chair who has served at least 2 or 4 years as IAB or IESG and do the comparison with the IAB/IESG again. Mike
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Dan: the original reason for wanting to understand who the meeting participants are (as a subset of all IETF participants) was a desire to track our participation. Similarly to how we already track where they come from, and present that pie chart in the plenary. You raise an issue about making deductions about the leadership bias based on these numbers. I agree that such deductions would be highly questionable. But enabling such comparisons was not the intent. It truly was merely to understand where we are in terms of participation, and how it evolves over time. Jari
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
The perception is important. It probably shows many things including attendance is not participation. Just for the completely unscientific hell of it, I just counted up the mic-sex in CCAMP's marathon meetings in Orlando. I counted minuted interventions and presentations. I counted each intervention in a conversation. I found a ratio of 7 male to 1 female. This proves nothing. Adrian -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Pete Resnick Sent: 18 April 2013 16:29 To: James Polk Cc: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to talk about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely that there are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think it's useful to think about. On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote: Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been a WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted IDs) there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women. Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole diversity conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through attendance lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over the past 10 years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 18:1 (with so much variability due to guessing on the basis of names), and it's seemed pretty consistent over the last 10 years. Over the past 5 years, the ratio of Nomcom members (randomly selected from the community) is about 10:1, which is consistent with those numbers. That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do. This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and subconscious biases get in the way. pr -- Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 10:28 AM 4/18/2013, Pete Resnick wrote: I noticed this post from a few days ago, but I think instructive to talk about. And this is not picking on James; I think it's likely that there are many folk who have similar perceptions, and I think it's useful to think about. On 4/12/13 3:37 PM, James Polk wrote: Eyeballing the IETF (and I've missed 2 meetings since IETF45, been a WG chair for 8 years, and written or revised over 300 submitted IDs) there is consistently about a 70-to-1 ratio of men to women. Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about 70:1. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a common view. However, when the whole diversity conversation started, a few people quickly scanned through attendance lists just to do a guesstimate of the actual ratios over the past 10 years. They were seeing rates somewhere between 10:1 and 18:1 (with so much variability due to guessing on the basis of names), and it's seemed pretty consistent over the last 10 years. Over the past 5 years, the ratio of Nomcom members (randomly selected from the community) is about 10:1, which is consistent with those numbers. I believe I did myself a disservice in assigning such a high ratio without saying it feels like 70:1, which it does. But I'd truly be surprised if it's only 10:1 - and you can't make effective and accurate estimates based on guessing the gender of the names of an international organization like the IETF is. Now, and this is purely from a defending myself pov, the feel of a 70:1 crowd that's right in front of you from a 18:1 crowd isn't that much, especially if you're part of that larger number. There is a matter of the number of the group you happen to be part of is so overwhelming you tend to guess on the high side. That's a factor of between 4 and 7 difference between an eyeball guess and a rough calculation. I think that's likely an unintentional sampling bias of your (and many other folks) eyeballs. And I think it's because we have a tendency to subconsciously discount the numbers of people who do not appear in leadership, or even simply don't behave the way the rest of us do. I have to disagree with you here. In my mind, this feels like a 70:1 ratio has nothing to do with the ratios of leadership to the community within the IETF, it's from the gathering places and hallways where there are just wave after wave (after wave) of men. It's also from sheer lack of numbers of women within the WGs I've attended over the years (SIP related, MMUSIC, GEOPRIV, ECRIT, the whole TSV area, etc). This isn't to say that we should spend all of our time on this question by collecting statistics; that's just navel gazing. But we do want to understand the nature of the problem and not let our guesses and subconscious biases get in the way. whether it's 70:1 or 18:1 - that's significantly more of one group that the other. Thanks Pete for making this point, and causing me to clarify what I originally wrote. James pr -- Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 18, 2013, at 1:06 PM, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote: What is this cure of which you speak? This diversity discussion has included statements like: Personally, not wearing an AD hat or attempting to anticipate the conclusions of the study group, I think the cure is to encourage more talented people to participate who do not share the same characteristics as the existing members, specifically with respect to age, sex, culture and/or geography. I think discouraging participation or limiting participation of existing participants is a bad idea, but encouraging new talented participants is always a good idea. And then I think we need to have a kind of ongoing consciousness-raising about how cognitive bias works, and how it might be affecting our decisions as participants. It's not enough to simply get a 50-50 male/female ratio, for example; if it were, the U.S. would elect female presidents slightly more than half the time, but of course we don't. But fixing either problem without fixing the other will not have much impact on diversity; if we fix the cognitive bias problem (should it even exist, which I am not asserting to be the case), that won't matter if the pool of candidates lacks diversity; if the pool of candidates is diverse, that won't matter if we don't correct for cognitive bias.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 18, 2013, at 2:33 PM, James Polk jmp...@cisco.com wrote: I believe I did myself a disservice in assigning such a high ratio without saying it feels like 70:1, which it does. But I'd truly be surprised if it's only 10:1 - and you can't make effective and accurate estimates based on guessing the gender of the names of an international organization like the IETF is. Part of the problem here is figuring out what you mean by 70:1. I think if you try to come up with a single ratio like this, you're oversimplifying to the point of uselessness.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Pete: Your eyeballing had you put the ratio at about (snip) FWIW, I took a database of first names, added a little piece of code on my document statistics page to guess genders to calculate aggregate numbers. I get results such as 13% of recent RFCs having female authors. Perhaps inline with some of the eyeballing numbers from this thread. (Details in http://www.arkko.com/tools/docstats.html - btw it does *not* retain per-individual information anywhere). However, there are a number of caveats. To begin with, there's a horrible 20-30% recognised error rate (unclassified names). And an unknown unrecognised error rate. And I looked at the recognised errors, and was able to tell my computer a few more names that it should recognise, but not much. Secondly, the situation is getting worse. Early RFCs were often unrecognisable, since first names were abbreviated. Then it got better, but now it is getting worse, drafts have a 30% recognised error rate. My theory is that our participation gets more international, and the databases that we can find for this sort of thing tend not to be so good with international names. I'm guessing participant lists would be worse than drafts. My conclusion is that it is difficult to come up with numbers either by eyeballing or data mining. Information from registration (country, newcomer/not, gender) might be useful from this perspective. But see below. Anyway, enough with engineering the measurements for now. I think some of these numbers are interesting, but only from a trend perspective, not in their absolute value or comparison to other numbers. We should get back to discussing how we can encourage more talented people to participate, as Ted put it. That is the important thing. Clearly, we like engineering. Obviously I went for it as well. But we should recognise that measurements are just a tiny detail. The best we could hope for is that a couple of years down the road we could pat ourselves in the back for making an improvement that is actually visible in the measurements. But that's it. Jari
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/17/13 2:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. Dan, leaving aside all of your other comments for the moment (many of which are straw men that nobody but you have suggested, speaking of fallacies), this one comment is a serious problem since it is so demonstrably false. Bias creeps in in all sorts of undetectable ways; if it was always detectable, lots of statisticians and psychologists and survey designers would be out of jobs. Aside from simple methodological data collection problems, bias is often caused by completely unconscious (and sometimes well intentioned) behaviors when it comes to human endeavors. The literature on this topic is so extensive that I can't even imagine why you would even suggest the opposite. We already know who we are. That's an interesting claim, and at least at first glance given other comments on the list, again seemingly false. As Adrian commented, perception is important. If it seems to some folks that the ratio of men to women throughout the IETF is 70:1, should it turn out that it is closer to 10:1 and the numbers in leadership are closer to 30:1, that would not only indicate that we don't already know 'who we are', but it could also be an interesting indication of why there might be statistical bias in the selection of leadership. (Or not. But it seems worthy of examination.) That's my two message limit for the day on the IETF list. pr -- Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, April 18, 2013 1:51 pm, Pete Resnick wrote: On 4/17/13 2:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. Dan, leaving aside all of your other comments for the moment (many of which are straw men that nobody but you have suggested, speaking of fallacies), this one comment is a serious problem since it is so demonstrably false. I'm sure I speak alone when I say that I hope you are only leaving my other comments aside for a moment and will return to them later. I would actually like to see a response that doesn't snip a 30-40 line post into 1 sentence. If you would like to engage me off-list, I welcome that. Bias creeps in in all sorts of undetectable ways; if it was always detectable, lots of statisticians and psychologists and survey designers would be out of jobs. Aside from simple methodological data collection problems, bias is often caused by completely unconscious (and sometimes well intentioned) behaviors when it comes to human endeavors. The literature on this topic is so extensive that I can't even imagine why you would even suggest the opposite. Now we're playing a subtle word game here. A bias that a statistician might add is demonstrably different than what Melinda Shore has _repeatedly_ referred to as gender bias. So when I'm talking about bias I'm talking about a form of discrimination based on gender. It is the intentional passing over of a more qualified woman in favor of a less qualified man. Exactly the same thing that is being referred to when she says: I'm telling you that I think the numbers are highly suggestive of bias. What numbers are those? The observable numbers about I* leadership. What is the bias being suggested? It is a bias against women. Straw man? I think not. A statistician might put bias in his statistical result and a survey designer might put bias in a question to elicit a favored result, intentionally or unintentionally. But we both know that is not what we're talking about here. We already know who we are. That's an interesting claim, and at least at first glance given other comments on the list, again seemingly false. As Adrian commented, perception is important. If it seems to some folks that the ratio of men to women throughout the IETF is 70:1, should it turn out that it is closer to 10:1 and the numbers in leadership are closer to 30:1, that would not only indicate that we don't already know 'who we are', but it could also be an interesting indication of why there might be statistical bias in the selection of leadership. (Or not. But it seems worthy of examination.) We are a volunteer standards organization that operates on a consensus basis. For the purposes of who we are the number of women that register for a meeting should be as relevant as the number of people who register that are left handed, flat footed or double jointed (for the record I am all three). In other words, not at all. There may be a statistical bias in the selection of leadership that favors left-handedness or maybe it disfavors left-handedness. Is that interesting? Maybe to someone. Is it worthwhile in finding out who we are? No. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Damn. Breaking my two message rule. On 4/18/13 4:47 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: Now we're playing a subtle word game here. A bias that a statistician might add is demonstrably different than what Melinda Shore has _repeatedly_ referred to as gender bias. So when I'm talking about bias I'm talking about a form of discrimination based on gender. It is the intentional passing over of a more qualified woman in favor of a less qualified man. It's so nice when the straw men stand up and say, Here I am! Look at me! Intentional passing over? Intentional??? I defy you to find anywhere in Melinda's messages Strike that: I defy you to find anywhere in *anybody's* messages on this topic where it says that the problem suspected is *intentional* gender bias. Overt intentional sexists and other such bigots are never a problem of this sort; they're sincere in their beliefs easy to identify. Finding and eliminating their sort of bias is a walk in the park. It's the *unintentional* and *institutional* and *structural* biases that are the ones that creep in all over the place and are the least detectable. If you think that all of this discussion is about intentional bias, you have been talking to yourself. A statistician might put bias in his statistical result and a survey designer might put bias in a question to elicit a favored result, intentionally or unintentionally. But we both know that is not what we're talking about here. Nonsense. That is exactly what we are talking about, whether it's how we ADs choose chairs, or how chairs choose document editors, or how we all choose nominees for the IESG or IAB, etc. If any of us thought we were talking about intentional bias, we would have packed up and gone home long ago. We are a volunteer standards organization that operates on a consensus basis. For the purposes of who we are the number of women that register for a meeting should be as relevant as the number of people who register that are left handed, flat footed or double jointed (for the record I am all three). In other words, not at all. All of those features *should* be equally relevant (i.e., not at all). And if you could design an interesting addition to the Harvard Implicit Association Test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ that showed whether people are or aren't unconsciously biased when it comes to left-handedness or flat-footedness or hypermobility (I hate that other term), I'm sure the Harvard folks would love to hear from you. But there *is* loads of nice evidence about unconscious bias when it comes to gender, especially when it comes to leadership roles and roles in engineering. I suspect (but until you design that test, can't provide evidence) that we *do* ignore (even subconsciously) left-handedness and flat-footedness and hypermobility when it comes to leadership positions in the IETF. But I also suspect that we are subconsciously influenced when it comes to gender bias; indeed, given what I know of the literature, it would be hard to imagine that we in the IETF are the astounding exception. So I think it's worth examining, especially given some of the interesting perceptual anecdotes seen already. So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias? pr -- Pete Resnickhttp://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, April 18, 2013 3:24 pm, Pete Resnick wrote: So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias? Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended to be done. If you think that we are subconsciously influenced when it comes to gender bias then I'd like to know what is going to be done about it. And if it's more than nothing then I'd like to know what our goal is vis-a-vis the gender breakdown of leadership positions and the lengths that we will go to ensure we reach it. If we're just gathering data to make a pie chart for the plenary then it seems like a waste of time. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013, Dan Harkins wrote: On Thu, April 18, 2013 3:24 pm, Pete Resnick wrote: So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias? Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended to be done. If you think that we are subconsciously influenced when it comes to gender bias then I'd like to know what is going to be done about it. And if it's more than nothing then I'd like to know what our goal is vis-a-vis the gender breakdown of leadership positions and the lengths that we will go to ensure we reach it. If we're just gathering data to make a pie chart for the plenary then it seems like a waste of time. Without gathering a baseline, it makes no sense to postulate mitigations because there is no way to judge progress. Others have already noted that there are several different points of concern. By measurement, it may be possible to establish that IESG gender membership tracks general meeting attendance (or doesn't track meeting attendance). If it tracks meeting attendance it seems reasonable to finds ways to increase participation by the underrepresented population in the whole IETF. If it doesn't track the general population, then more detailed analysis is needed of the process of selecting IESG members. Collecting population characteristics is the first baby step.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 18, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Dan Harkins dhark...@lounge.org wrote: Actually I think it would be better to explicitly state what is intended to be done. This is what we are trying to figure out!
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:17:21AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote: white and male. The fallacy works like this: If there was bias in favor of white males then we would have a leadership that is predominantly white and male. We have a leadership that is predominantly white and male, therefore we have bias. Just for the record, that is not a line of reasoning I am taking. The line I am taking is something more like the following. First, assume that, if there were bias in favour of (we're not testing for white, so I'm leaving that out) males, there might be an observable pattern of difference between the percentage of women in leadership positions and the percentage of women in overall participants. So, look at the leadership and the general participant populations over time. If there appears to be a difference, then that is reason to encourage further inquiry. If there appears to be no difference, then we are justified in saying that there is no evidence of an issue. That approach is just basic empiricism, and not the fallacy of affirming the consequent that you're claiming people are making. If such an approach is controversial, then every modern empirical science is on a shaky footing. It's certainly true (Hume makes this point rather more eloquently than I can) that such empirical argument is _formally_ false. But that's the wrong criterion, because empirical argument is useful. Even Hume played billiards. So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. If this is just some innocent question to find out who we are then why don't we ask about the size of the organization we work for? We don't need to. A large number of participants include an affiliation, and using by and large public data we could just find this out using the data we already have. I agree it would be useful. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan a...@anvilwalrusden.com
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Thu, April 18, 2013 6:44 pm, Andrew Sullivan wrote: On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:17:21AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote: So a problem statement has been made: there is a notable lack of diversity in the areas of race and gender. Why is this a problem? Because some people report that they experience a chilly environment, and we respect those people for their other contributions and would like more people like them to contribute in similar ways, and therefore we want to make the environment less chilly. I'm sort of surprised that that problem, which has been stated in my view quite plainly more than once in this thread, isn't evident to anyone participating. Well, that is certainly not the message that I read. What I read was that the I* leadership is 97% male (and 97% white) and that alone puts into question the legitimacy of the IETF as an International Standards Development Organization. If people are encountering a chilly environment then that is a different issue. It has been a few IETFs since I've heard someone approach the mic and say that is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time and a few more since it was said to me. That kind of brusqueness is part of our culture but I think it can be off-putting and a barrier to contributing. New people get intimidated around a bunch of aggressive type-A personalities and may be reluctant to present or contribute for fear of being put down. If we want to make the IETF a less chilly place that is more inviting and we want to encourage participation maybe we should address our cultural tics and idiosyncrasies that represent a barrier to entry rather than enumerate the women who have registered for a meeting. (And yes, I am talking about myself). regards, Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
AB, I think we do not want to change the nature of the IETF, we will still go with organisation that is designed around what needs to be achieved. Two working group chairs is a good, well working setup from a practical management standpoint. We've seen examples elsewhere of what happens when there's country-based voting and other things where geography or political considerations have been taken too far. (But we do of course increase the diversity of all the people involved in the process, whether participant or WG chair or other.) Jari
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
AB, Is it true that you are really Professor Irwin Corey? Irrespectively Yours, John -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam Baryun Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 9:51 PM To: ietf Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? My own feeling is that if we were to find that the numbers supported the notion that there's bias present in the system we probably couldn't do anything about it without tearing the organization apart, so, Is there a way to increase #countries #small companies #women etc? Be it about the participants or the leadership. Could we set a goal that we'll increase some aspect every year, 2014 to be better than 2013? IMO we can do many thing about it, if we discuss these issues into an I-D. - There is a way to increase #women when they decide together as a group what is missing, and what should be done, - There is a way to increase #small companies when they are accepted/involved in IETF WGs documents. If individuals are encouraged then SMEs will be as well, - There is a way to increase #countries/states when each have their accepted access to the IETF WG system. I may suggest that each WG system to not only have two chairs, but also 5 administrated participants (for each continent, they may give chance to SMEs access and new I-Ds) that should look into the implementation/running-code of the IETF WG standards in real life. They can look into countries/states challenges/involvement in such work of the WG, to be documented if available. Countries will only increase- in/use IETF if their SMEs are using IETF systems. Now it seems that there are influences/directions from the industry/countries to IETF WGs' work but not seen/clear to others. For women, I think there must be at least 10% of women in the IETF leadership, as we should not ignore that many research/SMEs in industry are directed by women. They should publish an I-D related if they are interested. Is IETF still directed by men or both? AB
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
what you are suggesting is quotas and forced participation from a volunteer organization... are you serious? At 11:51 PM 4/16/2013, Abdussalam Baryun wrote: My own feeling is that if we were to find that the numbers supported the notion that there's bias present in the system we probably couldn't do anything about it without tearing the organization apart, so, Is there a way to increase #countries #small companies #women etc? Be it about the participants or the leadership. Could we set a goal that we'll increase some aspect every year, 2014 to be better than 2013? IMO we can do many thing about it, if we discuss these issues into an I-D. - There is a way to increase #women when they decide together as a group what is missing, and what should be done, - There is a way to increase #small companies when they are accepted/involved in IETF WGs documents. If individuals are encouraged then SMEs will be as well, - There is a way to increase #countries/states when each have their accepted access to the IETF WG system. I may suggest that each WG system to not only have two chairs, but also 5 administrated participants (for each continent, they may give chance to SMEs access and new I-Ds) that should look into the implementation/running-code of the IETF WG standards in real life. They can look into countries/states challenges/involvement in such work of the WG, to be documented if available. Countries will only increase-in/use IETF if their SMEs are using IETF systems. Now it seems that there are influences/directions from the industry/countries to IETF WGs' work but not seen/clear to others. For women, I think there must be at least 10% of women in the IETF leadership, as we should not ignore that many research/SMEs in industry are directed by women. They should publish an I-D related if they are interested. Is IETF still directed by men or both? AB
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Dan, On 4/16/13 2:00 AM, Dan Harkins wrote: Under the belief of garbage in, garbage out, I tend to lie on these sorts of repugnant questions. I invite others to join me. The more suspect the quality of the data, the less value it has. Dan. Please don't. We are trying to understand who we are. Is that SO unreasonable? Eliot
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Elliot, On Wed, April 17, 2013 7:52 am, Eliot Lear wrote: Dan, On 4/16/13 2:00 AM, Dan Harkins wrote: Under the belief of garbage in, garbage out, I tend to lie on these sorts of repugnant questions. I invite others to join me. The more suspect the quality of the data, the less value it has. Dan. Please don't. We are trying to understand who we are. Is that SO unreasonable? We already know who we are. This question is trying to decide our gender make up and nothing good can come of it. It will provide more evidence for people to make use of logical fallacies-- if P implies Q then look we now have evidence of Q therefore P-- which really have no place in an organization devoted to engineering. And it will be used as a baseline for doing work towards some goal that has not been justified, work whose very nature requires treating people according to what they are instead of who they are. Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. I don't recall seeing any evidence of bias being presented on this list. And I don't believe there is any problem has been mentioned that we had or have that is caused by this predominance of white men. It's just been stated as a problem itself. We must have less white men. Why? Because, that's why. This question is the first step down a path we really should not go down. If I can't stop the question from being asked then all I can hope for is that the resulting data are so obviously wrong that they will be of no use to anyone-- e.g. Berlin registration is 63% female. regards, Dan.
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
At 04:54 17-04-2013 it was written: Is it true that you are really Professor Irwin Corey? As I was unfamiliar with the above I looked it up. From RFC 3184: The work of the IETF relies on cooperation among a broad cultural diversity of peoples, ideas, and communication styles. The comment may be humorous or something else depending on cultural background. Regards, -sm
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Dan, On 4/17/13 9:21 PM, Dan Harkins wrote: We already know who we are. I disagree. We make a whole lot of assumptions about who we are, but we don't actually know, and that's why the question is being asked. I would clarify that IMHO the only reason this question should be asked is for demographic purposes, along with others. This question is trying to decide our gender make up and nothing good can come of it. It will provide more evidence for people to make use of logical fallacies-- if P implies Q then look we now have evidence of Q therefore P-- which really have no place in an organization devoted to engineering. This would be putting the cart before the horse. We first need to understand facts. If we don't understand facts, then people will continue on assumptions. And it will be used as a baseline for doing work towards some goal that has not been justified, work whose very nature requires treating people according to what they are instead of who they are. Look, bias stinks and when it exists its stench is detectable. I don't recall seeing any evidence of bias being presented on this list. And I don't believe there is any problem has been mentioned that we had or have that is caused by this predominance of white men. It's just been stated as a problem itself. We must have less white men. Why? Because, that's why. Nobody has proposed that, and I think you can put a bit more faith in your peers to not make important decisions based on because. Eliot
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 17April2013Wednesday, at 12:45, SM wrote:At 04:54 17-04-2013 it was written:Is it true that you are really Professor Irwin Corey?As I was unfamiliar with the above I looked it up.From RFC 3184: "The work of the IETF relies on cooperation among a broad cultural diversity of peoples, ideas, and communication styles."The comment may be humorous or something else depending on cultural background.Regards,-sm The Official Site OfIrwin Coreywww.irwincorey.org/Official website of Prof.Irwin Corey, the world's foremost authority.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 17April2013Wednesday, at 12:45, SM wrote: At 04:54 17-04-2013 it was written: Is it true that you are really Professor Irwin Corey? As I was unfamiliar with the above I looked it up. From RFC 3184: The work of the IETF relies on cooperation among a broad cultural diversity of peoples, ideas, and communication styles. The comment may be humorous or something else depending on cultural background. Regards, -sm I -think- your argument cuts both ways. much of this thread, and a couple others of recent vintage, come from one or two ernest individuals who have a fairly narrow view of how things work in the wide world. They appear to want to stamp out uncomfortable views and operational practice that does not align with their world view. The Irwin Corey reference might be a gentle reminder that one should not take one's self too seriously, to seek sound, technically grounded solutions, and seek to become part of the community instead of trying to force the community to fit your view…. (Irwin is a consummate observer of the human condition) /bill
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Just think how much real-world networking and Internet work actually is being done around the world still in small companies, for instance, in addition to our large companies. Well, yes. I'm typing this in Tarawa where I've been upgrading the island's internet, and my chances of attending an IETF are rather slim. I'll just have to leave it to all you first-world western northern-hemisphere types, no matter how much diversity you lack, and how much transport perspective you need. Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
My own feeling is that if we were to find that the numbers supported the notion that there's bias present in the system we probably couldn't do anything about it without tearing the organization apart, so, Is there a way to increase #countries #small companies #women etc? Be it about the participants or the leadership. Could we set a goal that we'll increase some aspect every year, 2014 to be better than 2013? IMO we can do many thing about it, if we discuss these issues into an I-D. - There is a way to increase #women when they decide together as a group what is missing, and what should be done, - There is a way to increase #small companies when they are accepted/involved in IETF WGs documents. If individuals are encouraged then SMEs will be as well, - There is a way to increase #countries/states when each have their accepted access to the IETF WG system. I may suggest that each WG system to not only have two chairs, but also 5 administrated participants (for each continent, they may give chance to SMEs access and new I-Ds) that should look into the implementation/running-code of the IETF WG standards in real life. They can look into countries/states challenges/involvement in such work of the WG, to be documented if available. Countries will only increase-in/use IETF if their SMEs are using IETF systems. Now it seems that there are influences/directions from the industry/countries to IETF WGs' work but not seen/clear to others. For women, I think there must be at least 10% of women in the IETF leadership, as we should not ignore that many research/SMEs in industry are directed by women. They should publish an I-D related if they are interested. Is IETF still directed by men or both? AB
RE: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I am deeply offended by your '5 continents' and lack of inclusiveness. Lloyd Wood http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/ I come from a land down under. From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Abdussalam Baryun [abdussalambar...@gmail.com] Sent: 17 April 2013 05:51 To: ietf Subject: Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration? My own feeling is that if we were to find that the numbers supported the notion that there's bias present in the system we probably couldn't do anything about it without tearing the organization apart, so, Is there a way to increase #countries #small companies #women etc? Be it about the participants or the leadership. Could we set a goal that we'll increase some aspect every year, 2014 to be better than 2013? IMO we can do many thing about it, if we discuss these issues into an I-D. - There is a way to increase #women when they decide together as a group what is missing, and what should be done, - There is a way to increase #small companies when they are accepted/involved in IETF WGs documents. If individuals are encouraged then SMEs will be as well, - There is a way to increase #countries/states when each have their accepted access to the IETF WG system. I may suggest that each WG system to not only have two chairs, but also 5 administrated participants (for each continent, they may give chance to SMEs access and new I-Ds) that should look into the implementation/running-code of the IETF WG standards in real life. They can look into countries/states challenges/involvement in such work of the WG, to be documented if available. Countries will only increase-in/use IETF if their SMEs are using IETF systems. Now it seems that there are influences/directions from the industry/countries to IETF WGs' work but not seen/clear to others. For women, I think there must be at least 10% of women in the IETF leadership, as we should not ignore that many research/SMEs in industry are directed by women. They should publish an I-D related if they are interested. Is IETF still directed by men or both? AB
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
- Original Message - From: Lou Berger lber...@labn.net To: Melinda Shore melinda.sh...@gmail.com Cc: ietf@ietf.org Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 1:09 PM Melinda, I'm not so sure debating the merits of a specific measure has value or not is really that helpful, and I probably just should have ignore this small point. Let's say some limited measure of diversity is valid, what do we learn from it? Is the conclusion that only one group is being discriminated against and that the IETF needs to address this one specific form of discrimination, or is it that the top of the IETF is far from diverse? If the latter, I buy it -- the IETF has a diversity issue. As many others have said, there are many forms of bias and discrimination -- all of which are harmful, and only some of which have the legal protection (in your favorite country) that they should. Irrespective of any specific statistic, I think this discussion has shown that there is consensus that working to eliminate bias and discrimination *in all forms* from the IETF is worth paying attention to. Do you disagree, are you saying that the IETF should only/first try to address only gender bias? I personally think all IETF participants should have voice in this discussion, no matter if they fall into an obviously discriminated against group or not. This includes the full range of participants, even newcomers, folks who have never authored an I-D, folks who by any measure are significant I* contributors, and even western white guys. IMO the exclusion of any voice is itself a manifestation of bias. I am in the happy position of not having attended an IETF meeting for a while and for many, perhaps most, of those active on the lists I track, I have no idea what they look like. White or black, western or eastern, I have no idea. An e-mail address of a CJK company used to suggest a person of eastern origins, now it just means that the CJK company has taken control of the western one. Sometimes I cannot even tell male or female, although the name used may give me a clue. In one case, an AD referred to a contribution as coming from a 'he' which is surely wrong, that is a woman's name; but I do not know, cannot tell, only that the contributions that she/he makes are valuable and I would be happy to see them as, e.g., AD. So perhaps, to reduce the bias, e.g. towards western white, any system of choosing should give preference to the views of those who do not attend IETF meetings, for whom judgement is based solely on the contributions the person in question is seen to make - via the mailing lists - towards open standards and running code. Tom Petch (white, western) Lou
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 15, 2013, at 4:44 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: So perhaps, to reduce the bias, e.g. towards western white, any system of choosing should give preference to the views of those who do not attend IETF meetings, for whom judgement is based solely on the contributions the person in question is seen to make - via the mailing lists - towards open standards and running code. We could also all be assigned masks, vocoders and randomly-generated numbers at the beginning of each IETF, and go around wearing burlap robes. The problem with your solution is that at the moment it's actually pretty hard to participate in IETF without going to meetings. It's a source of some frustration to me that despite having basically invented the Internet, the IETF still does business as if we were living in the pre-Internet era. Three face-to-face meetings a year is a lot of carbon, and I think it also creates barriers for participation that are only readily surpassed by people who for whatever reason happen to have a great deal of advantage. The degree of good fortune that allows me to participate in IETF as I do is breathtaking in its improbability.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Toerless, A question because my institutional memory does reach as far back: How much was Europe represented over the decades in IETF leadership ? Right now for example IESG seems to have maybe at least 5 europeans (don't really know how to figure out location for all of them, those where just the easy ones for me). But i would expect that this was by far not the case going back in time. Nobody cares about diversity for europeans in this round of the discussion, but i wonder if this was equally true in the past. Can't say much about the leadership situation, as I have not tracked it. But there has definitely been significant increase of Europeans participating in the IETF work over time, though most of it happened many years ago. See http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-contdistrhist_norm.html Asian growth has been a more recent occurrence. Maybe this evolution would be a good example to folks without that long reaching institutional memory to show how the IETF leadership does pretty well reflect the evolution of the industry. If the industry will become more diverse, IETF will reflect this equally. If on the other hand we try to achieve greater diversity than the industry, then we have a real challenge on our hand. The concentration to fewer and larger companies in todays vs. past leadership was mentioned in before as bad. I think its exactly for the same reason. True. And the Asian growth and lack of some other parts of world reflect some of those industry situations. But at the same time, I feel the situation is a little bit like discussing something in a group here you actually want to hear everyone's opinion. Since there will always be a few quiet ones, you take special care to ask the quiet ones for their opinions, and in the end may learn something important from them. The ones who do not have the strongest and largest industries may also have important input for us with regards to the Internet. This is why we need to continue with things like the ISOC fellowship program, or make an extra effort to get smaller companies involved. We can't change where work actually happens, but we should at least know who the silent ones are in the Internet community (yet with knowledge) and make an extra effort to get at least some involvement from them. Just think how much real-world networking and Internet work actually is being done around the world still in small companies, for instance, in addition to our large companies. Jari
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Apr 15, 2013, at 6:50 AM, Ted Lemon ted.le...@nominum.com wrote: On Apr 15, 2013, at 4:44 AM, t.p. daedu...@btconnect.com wrote: So perhaps, to reduce the bias, e.g. towards western white, any system of choosing should give preference to the views of those who do not attend IETF meetings, for whom judgement is based solely on the contributions the person in question is seen to make - via the mailing lists - towards open standards and running code. We could also all be assigned masks, vocoders and randomly-generated numbers at the beginning of each IETF, and go around wearing burlap robes. The problem with your solution is that at the moment it's actually pretty hard to participate in IETF without going to meetings. It's a source of some frustration to me that despite having basically invented the Internet, the IETF still does business as if we were living in the pre-Internet era. Three face-to-face meetings a year is a lot of carbon, and I think it also creates barriers for participation that are only readily surpassed by people who for whatever reason happen to have a great deal of advantage. The degree of good fortune that allows me to participate in IETF as I do is breathtaking in its improbability. Dear Ted, Well said. This speaks directly to what is limiting diversity, costs the Internet should remedy. Although resources necessary to host meetings online are substantial, they pale in comparison with physical presence requirements. I would have preferred if more females were in my all male engineering classes. Lowering cost should reduce average participant age which should offer better gender/ethnic balance. IMHO, diversity is more sensitive to a predominance of those wanting to generate ad revenue with a preference for dancing fruit, at the expense of security. This has introduced i-frames, pdf with javascript, java, and many other types of unauthenticated active and proprietary content that remain major security issues. How can the IETF increase the preference for clean, simple, open, and secure working code? Perhaps registration forms could ask about roles as related to marketing, engineering, management, or support. From this, perhaps needed outreach can be better determined. Regards, Douglas Otis
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Fri, April 12, 2013 7:22 pm, Melinda Shore wrote: On 4/12/13 1:26 PM, Lou Berger wrote: No argument from me, I'm just asking that a comment/position/question that I don't understand be substantiated. And I'm telling you that I think the numbers are highly suggestive of bias. This is the classic fallacy of Affirming the Consequent. And like all fallacies, the reasoning is just plain wrong. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Melinda, My own feeling is that if we were to find that the numbers supported the notion that there's bias present in the system we probably couldn't do anything about it without tearing the organization apart, so, I am actually a little bit more optimistic about it, for a couple of reasons. First, it does not take genius to understand that we have biases. We all do. And I'm not trying to minimise the problem by presenting it as a common occurrence, but it is a fact that we have biases. People tend to prefer status quo, select similar people to themselves for various roles, carry society's stereotypes about various tasks, etc. Not surprising that the IETF has that too, but of course it does not make me happy. We can try to reduce the bias, however. What helps with this is education, information, and good examples. As for the information education part, I think the discussion we've had on diversity has already made the issue better highlighted. When something is in people's mind they tend to take it into account. FWIW, personnel discussions that I've been involved as the chair have had a very serious discussion about whether there was something we could do here to improve some aspect of diversity. Again, this isn't the only factor to consider, and most IETF leadership discussions are pretty constrained, have limited pools of volunteers to choose from, and so on. But I think we'll see the effect of that in coming years. There won't be a revolution, but I think we'll see some effect. Secondly - and this is why I though some knowledge of our participant base would be useful - what I'd find useful is to get to a mode where we can look at progress. Is there a way to increase #countries #small companies #women etc? Be it about the participants or the leadership. Could we set a goal that we'll increase some aspect every year, 2014 to be better than 2013? It would be wonderful if we could track that somehow, while of course respecting people's privacy, not retaining any data, checking with experts, etc. And we could, of course, conduct a far more comprehensive surveys, I think we'll get to that as well. Later, perhaps when the design team comes up with some recommendations. And by their nature, such comprehensive surveys will be separate efforts. But Ray's question was prompted by the need to have the IETF-87 registration form up and running very soon and we wondered if some very basic information could be collected. (Registration questions are not the only way to do this of course, separate surveys are a possibility. And I've experimented with using heuristics to make a guess of population's gender percentages. If you look at my document statistics page, you'll see the beginnings of some of the analysis. With truly massive error rates, of course. This could be repeated for meetings as well, I suppose. Not sure this is a viable approach, though.) Jari
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On Sat, April 13, 2013 8:18 am, Ray Pelletier wrote: On Apr 13, 2013, at 8:46 AM, Stephen Farrell stephen.farr...@cs.tcd.ie wrote: On 04/13/2013 01:09 PM, Lou Berger wrote: gender bias ... western white guys. It may be that the latter phrase is a common term in north America, (I dunno) but fwiw it grates on me at least. If the issue we're talking about relates to gender, That's the question: Optional question: Check the block. Male/Female Under the belief of garbage in, garbage out, I tend to lie on these sorts of repugnant questions. I invite others to join me. The more suspect the quality of the data, the less value it has. Dan.
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 13/04/2013 17:15, John C Klensin wrote: --On Friday, April 12, 2013 23:37 -0400 Andrew Sullivan a...@anvilwalrusden.com wrote: The only lesson I really learned from that experience is that it is incredibly hard for women[1] to be treated as adult colleagues in an environment that acts overwhelmingly as a white male club. JJ Thompson, Grace Anscomb, etc., notwithstanding. Similarly, Grace Hopper, Jean Sammet, Jane Thompson, Martha Steenstrup, Deborah Estrin, Sally Floyd, etc. That doesn't change your point other than to identify a different fallacy in the girl-philosophy hypothesis and its computer science / networking analogies. If you haven't heard of some of the above, it demonstrations a slightly different point. It may also suggest that there is an area in which the IETF is absolutely non-discriminatory: there is no evidence that the IETF has been any more effective in driving, e.g., Martha or Deborah out than with Crowcroft, Elz, Clark, Chapin, And I'm not sure about the driving out rather than driving *on* to bigger and better things. Also, speaking from personal observation over the last 12 months in Cambridge (the original one), at least one of those you mentioned is leading a very lively research group including several active IETF contributors. Brian
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
I struggle to engage in this debate because in general I'm not sure how my voice helps advance the general discussion. But I do want to make two points: On 4/12/13 8:33 PM, Melinda Shore wrote: I think it's unintentional [...] 1. As others have said there are many forms of bias in play, which may require different forms of redress. I expect we can be more successful in some areas than others. 2. Let's be careful with using words like unintentional. For all we know there may be very good reasons that led to the results of this year. This is not something I would expect to come out of a NOMCOM report, by the way, due to their confidentiality requirements. And there is where I think we are most wrapped around the axle. In any case, hard as it may be, we as a community have identified a huge concern, and it would be regrettable if we didn't explore that concern and try to find areas in which we could improve. I claim that doing so will improve the IETF in the longer term. Eliot
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Ted, Spencer [I am merging my replies for convenience] At 18:51 12-04-2013, Ted Lemon wrote: Are they really that hard to get to know? A number of them are participating in this conversation. It's certainly hard to get time to sit with them at IETF meetings. I don't know what the workload is like for IAB members, but I think I worked at least an 80 hour week in Orlando. It's not that hard to get to meet an IAB member. However, they have a busy workload which makes it difficult to meet them for a chat. Speaking for myself, I have not had any difficult meeting a few IAB members. I do not assume that the average IETF participant will get to know them. At 20:10 12-04-2013, Spencer Dawkins wrote: It happens that SM grabbed me for at least one extended conversation in the hallway in Orlando (he grabbed me for several conversations, but not all of them lasted half an hour), and I found that conversation very helpful from my side. I found the conversation helpful too. Finally - there are people on the IAB with fabulous social skills, but I'm not one of them. If someone needs to spend time picking my brain, I usually do have multiple meals open during IETF week. I think that you are underestimating your skills. :-) I would have spent that half an hour chatting with you even if you weren't an IAB member. Regards, -sm
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Hi Melinda, At 19:22 12-04-2013, Melinda Shore wrote: to be the best. Pretty much every organization that applauds itself for its meritocratic reward structure (to the extent that an I* gig is a reward) and yet only advances white guys says the same thing. It is a trope, and a familiar one. If you pick an Area Director who does not do the work the effects will be apparent within the area and during IESG evaluation. If you pick a Working Group Chair who does not do the work the effects will only be visible within the working group. The Area Director will probably step in and to limit damage. If you pick an IAB members who does not do the work the effects will not be visible. That applies for IAOC members too. Michael Richardson commented about the apparent bias that we are experiencing [1]. The Area Directors, except for two of them, work for large vendors. Is there a bias in favor of vendors? I don't think so; large vendors have money and can afford to provide funding support. Is the problem about women being qualified and not having having met enough people that the person's qualifications has been recognized? I don't know. Andrw Sullivan provided a cautionary tale [2] about quotas. My reason for not favoring quotas is that the entire atmosphere will be poisoned. I would not try to convince anyone about that. My opinion is what Andrew Sullivan mentioned; it is incredibly hard for women to be treated as colleagues in an environment that acts overwhelmingly as a male club. An alternative is to have more women, not as tokens, but as persons who can make the environment less harsh. What's missing in the discussion is how to make that happen. Regards, -sm 1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg78626.html 2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg78637.html
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
On 4/12/13 8:55 PM, Martin Rex wrote: SM wrote: Ted Lemon wrote: So in fact you don't need to put some percentage of white males on the IESG, the IAB or the IAOC to make me happy. I want people on these bodies who feel strongly about open standards, rough consensus and running code. That's the kool-aid I have drunk, and I Me 2! Me too, but when you have a diverse pool of people who feel strongly about open standards, rough consensus and running code and you choose only one category of the group, then we need to think about how we end up in that situation. Regards, as
Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?
Melinda, I'm not so sure debating the merits of a specific measure has value or not is really that helpful, and I probably just should have ignore this small point. Let's say some limited measure of diversity is valid, what do we learn from it? Is the conclusion that only one group is being discriminated against and that the IETF needs to address this one specific form of discrimination, or is it that the top of the IETF is far from diverse? If the latter, I buy it -- the IETF has a diversity issue. As many others have said, there are many forms of bias and discrimination -- all of which are harmful, and only some of which have the legal protection (in your favorite country) that they should. Irrespective of any specific statistic, I think this discussion has shown that there is consensus that working to eliminate bias and discrimination *in all forms* from the IETF is worth paying attention to. Do you disagree, are you saying that the IETF should only/first try to address only gender bias? I personally think all IETF participants should have voice in this discussion, no matter if they fall into an obviously discriminated against group or not. This includes the full range of participants, even newcomers, folks who have never authored an I-D, folks who by any measure are significant I* contributors, and even western white guys. IMO the exclusion of any voice is itself a manifestation of bias. Lou On 4/12/2013 10:22 PM, Melinda Shore wrote: On 4/12/13 1:26 PM, Lou Berger wrote: No argument from me, I'm just asking that a comment/position/question that I don't understand be substantiated. And I'm telling you that I think the numbers are highly suggestive of bias. We can take a swing at getting a very rough handle on that but I'm actually not sure that we should because it appears to be the case that the cost of any remediation that some of us might want to undertake would be higher than the cost of living with bias in the system (this would be the considerable downside to consensus decision-making processes with a very large participant base). And I don't know if you intended to or not, but what you communicated is The best candidates are nearly always western white guys, since that's who's being selected. That's a problematic suggestion. I certainly, in no way, shape, or form intended such an implication. I have not idea how one could read it that way, [ ... ] A (male) friend once said that men are no more likely to notice sexism than fish are to notice water. I think that was far too broad but generally true. If I think that white western men are being selected in disproportion to their presence in the candidate pool, and I do, then telling me that we only choose the best is telling me that white, western men tend to be the best. Pretty much every organization that applauds itself for its meritocratic reward structure (to the extent that an I* gig is a reward) and yet only advances white guys says the same thing. It is a trope, and a familiar one. Melinda